Full Course Description
Sex and Relationship Therapy Immersion with Tammy Nelson:
Critical Insights for Working with Trauma, Grief, Narcissistic Abuse, Neurodiversity, and More
When you’re working with clients in intimate relationships, you’re going to face challenges with sex and intimacy – and you need the right skills to be effective in helping them navigate these ruptures. Most approaches to working with sex and intimacy are based on outdated models, and they don’t equip therapists with the skills they need to work with modern relationships. That’s why we are excited to partner with relationship expert and sexologist, Tammy Nelson – along with clinical experts including Frank Anderson, Ramani Durvasula, David Kessler and more – to give you the insights guidance and skills you need to confidently work with the real-life issues impacting relationships today – including trauma, neurodivergence, desires differences, narcissistic abuse and more.
Program Information
Objectives
- Identify the key concepts and theories related to generational trauma and racism, especially in the context of wounded couples.
- Describe a clinical approach for addressing generational trauma and racism in couples’ therapy.
- Define Internal family systems, demonstrating awareness of its understanding of interpersonal relationship dynamics.
- Discuss how IFS can be integrated into relationship therapy to support issues related to emotional disconnection and sexual dissatisfaction.
- Analyze the role of narcissism and its effect on sexual intimacy in relationships.
- Discuss critical considerations for therapists working with narcissism in individual and couples therapy.
- Critically examine the impact of grief on intimate relationships.
- Describe how meaning-making can facilitate healing following the ending of a relationship.
- Explore how implicit memories influence intimate relationships, especially in the context of outdated patterns.
- Summarize how somatic approaches can be used to foster deeper connections in relationships.
- Analyze modern day factors that may be impacting an emerging adult’s ability to develop emotional closeness.
- Define Asexuality and Aromanticism, demonstrating an understanding of how these identities relate to the broader LGBTQIA2+ spectrum.
- Discuss intimacy and desire discrepancies with clients in a way that affirms and supports Asexual and Aromantic individuals.
- Discuss the distinct ways in which traits of Autism and other forms of Neurodivergence impact intimacy, connection, and sexual relationships.
- Discuss why conventional couples therapy often fails Neurodiverse couples, and propose alternative strategies that address their specific needs.
- Identify the theological constructs upholding sex-negativity, including how therapy can be utilized to deconstruct them.
- Describe at least two interventions you could use to support couples address sex and substance abuse issues.
Outline
Introduction
- What is Integrative Relationship Therapy (IRT)
- How can individual therapy be relationship therapy
- What to expect from this course
Module 1: Working with Generational and Racial Trauma with Sabrina Ndiaye
- Overview of generational trauma and racism
- What therapists need to know about the impact of generational and racial trauma on sex and intimacy
- How to approach relational work when working across cultural differences
- What you can do to help clients heal generational and racial trauma within the context of their relationships
Module 2: Enhancing Work with Sex and Couples using Internal Family Systems (IFS) with Frank Anderson
- Overview of Internal Family Systems (IFS)
- The role of trauma in partner selection
- Why trying to heal attachment wounds with your partner doesn’t work
- What IFS can teach us about working with sexual orientation and gender
- How healing can occur in the context of relationships -
- An IFS approach to healing sexual trauma
Module 3: Narcissism, Sex and Relationships with Ramani Durvasula
- How narcissistic traits impact intimate relationships and sexual dynamics
- The risks clients face when they’re in a relationship with a narcissist and what you can do to help
- Guidance for navigating the challenges of working with narcissists in individual and couple therapy
- What to expect in treatment when trying to work towards healthier relationship dynamics
Module 4: Grief and Relationships with David Kessler
- How grief affects intimacy and sex in relationships
- The process of grief following breakups, divorce, affairs, changes in intimacy and more
- What therapists can do to help clients work through relationship grief
- The generational impact of grief and what it takes to stop the cycle
- Making meaning after loss
Module 5: Somatic Healing in Couples Work: Healing in the Body; Somatic Practices to Heal and Connect with Abi Blakeslee
- Overview of the relationship between intimacy and the body
- The connection between bodily awareness and emotional healing
- The impact of trauma on intimacy and sexual dynamics
- How implicit memories shape relational patterns
- The connection between interoception and sexual intimacy
- How to help clients work through barriers to sex and intimacy
- Somatic interventions for facilitating relationship repair and build trust
Module 6: Sex, Dating, and Partnership among Emerging Adults with Alexandra Solomon
- Modern landscape of dating, especially for emerging adults
- Impact of macro systems: erosion of reproductive justice, political polarization, epidemic of loneliness, economic instability– and how to navigate them
- Turning breakups into new beginnings
- Navigating sex with emerging adults
- Pace discrepancies and concerns about commitment
- What you can do to support emerging adults develop healthful emotional and relational skills
Module 7: Asexuality and Aromanticism in Relationships with Aubri Lancaster
- Defining, understanding Asexuality (Ace), Aromanticism (Aro) and more
- Differentiating Romantic Attraction and Performative Romance
- Approaching Desire Discrepancies in therapy
- Affirmative ways to discuss and support sex and relationships
- Practical tips for avoiding labeling and pathologizing
Module 8: Rewriting the Rules: Sex, Love, and Connection in Neurodivergent Relationships with Kory Andreas
- What you need to know about neurodivergent clients
- What Autism descriptors to use (and which to avoid)
- Relationships and sex for Neurodivergent adults
- How couple therapy fails Neurodiverse couples
- Common themes in therapy with Neurodivergent clients
- Guidance for therapists with Neurodivergent clients
Module 9: Sex and Religion: How to Heal Religious Guilt and Shame and Fear of Pleasure with Beverly Dale
- Deconstructing the theological constructs upholding sex-negativity
- Identifying the origins of religious fear of the sexual body and pleasure
- A framework to help religious people get beyond their fears and embrace pleasure
- Theological principles that emphasize neutral or pleasure-centered religious beliefs
- Guided imagery for releasing sex-negativity
- Affirmations to support the release of shame and guilt
Module 10: Substance Abuse, Harm Reduction and Relationships with Andrew Tatarsky
- The defining features of addiction and how they are most likely to impact relationships
- The impact of substance abuse on sexual dynamics
- Key interventions that can be used to reduce substance use concerns while improving relationship functioning
- Using harm reduction treatment with couples and sexual issues
Module 11: Summary and Wrap Up
- Key take aways from the discussions
Target Audience
- Counselors
- Social Workers
- Psychologists
- Psychotherapists
- Therapists
- Marriage & Family Therapists
- Addiction Counselors
- Case Managers
- Physicians
- Other Mental Health Professionals
Copyright :
10/02/2024
Healing from Affairs: Moving Past the Trauma of Betrayal and Infidelity
In this cutting-edge training, we will discuss the varieties of affairs and the many ways that relationships can heal from the betrayal that affects intimacy. We will review the stages of recovery that lead to long-term healing. Issues around trust, forgiveness, new visions of monogamy, sexuality and connection for the future of the couple’s relationship will be addressed. The recording will include videos and case examples to illustrate how breaches of monogamy can affect potential ongoing connection.
We will look at integrity, narcissism, second adolescence, parallel love relationships, online affairs, pornography, sex addiction and emotional infidelity and their effect on sexuality, intimacy and emotional connection and how therapists can help restart communication. We will review three phases of treatment and the steps of the recovery process.
It is crucial to understand the triangulation that can occur when therapists do not explore their own bias and countertransference and we will look at how to avoid unintentional shaming and client retaliation. We will look at the power of the third in the relationship, including the therapeutic as well as the romantic. This recording will delve into the meaning of each type of affair and participants will learn interventions to help repair, restructure and redefine the future and help clients create a new monogamy for a stronger more insightful and connected partnership.
This recording will move beyond a victim, perpetrator and rescuer model of therapy and will create sustainable monogamy agreements where transparency and authenticity promote resiliency.
Program Information
Target Audience
- Addiction Counselors
- Counselors
- Marriage and Family Therapists
- Nurses
- Physicians
- Psychologists
- Social Workers
Objectives
- Catalog infidelity using the three-part definition and how partners are affected in a marriage or committed partnership.
- Determine the betrayal trauma effects on relationships and how collusion and bias play a part in the secondary gain of the role of the third in infidelity.
- Analyze why the current therapy isn’t working and why some systems of recovery from affairs can retraumatize clients.
- Distinguish the three phases of treatment after an affair and determine how they can improve treatment outcomes.
- Distinguish the difference between implicit and explicit monogamy and create new monogamy agreements.
- Construct a revised formula for treatment plans after infidelity breaches, to include long term sustainable monogamy.
Outline
Affair recovery in Integrative Relationship Therapy
- Why do people cheat?
- The types of Affairs that present in treatment
- What is Infidelity?
- Three Parts of an affair
- Countertransference
- Role of the third in treatment
- Avoiding re-traumatization in therapy
- What is betrayal trauma
- What is collusion and bias and secondary gain
- Individual integrative therapy
Three stages of Affair recovery treatment
- Crisis/realization
- Insight/reevaluate
- Vision/renegotiate
- What is erotic recovery
- Pleasure heals trauma
- Treating the cheating partner
- Video: case
- Erotic shutdown
- What is second adolescence?
- Coping with reactivity
- Lean in lean out – the dilemma of ending an affair
Creating long term sustainable relationship agreements
- Trust, safety and the trap of forgiveness
- Implicit vs explicit monogamy
- Decrease rumination/blame/projection
- Micro and Macro behaviors in treatment
- Video: case
Handing Dishonesty
Vulnerable cycle
Long Term Monogamy Plan
Future Treatment Recommendations
Copyright :
04/19/2023